Valhalla Rising (42 page)

Turner and McKirdy stared at each other like men wandering lost in a blizzard. There was nothing in their minds to say. They were overwhelmed with incredulity at being stymied every step of the way. There was no predicting the unexpected damage. The extent of treachery was beyond their comprehension.

Giordino had a feeling of unreality. Losing a best friend in a quick accident was abhorrent enough, but waiting for a perfectly healthy person to simply die because no one could help him, because he was beyond the reach of modern science and technology, was totally unacceptable. A grief-stricken man is driven to defy the gods. Giordino determined to do something, anything, if it meant diving 550 feet down to the wreck himself.

Then with grave misgiving, and without an order from Turner, McKirdy blew the water ballast, trimmed the craft and sent it toward the surface. Every man on board knew, even though he refused to visualize it, that the crew and passengers inside the
Golden Marlin
were watching the rescue vehicle fade until it was lost in the murky void, not knowing their hopes and illusions went with it.

T
he mood inside the
Golden Marlin
was macabre. The passengers entered the dining room and ate as scheduled, gambled in the casino, drank cocktails in the lounge, read in the library and went to bed, as though the cruise had never ended. There was nothing else they could do. If any of them felt the slowly decreasing amount of oxygen, none showed it. They talked about their situation as if it were the weather. It was almost as if they were in denial.

The passengers who had been left aboard were mostly senior citizens, with a few younger but childless couples, two dozen single men and women, and the fathers who’d stayed behind after their wives and children left in the one remaining evacuation pod. The service crew went about their usual duties waiting on tables, cooking in the galley, cleaning the staterooms and putting on shows in the theater. Only the engine room crew worked endlessly, maintaining the pumps and the generators that still provided power. Luckily, these were housed in a separate compartment from the engine room and were sealed off immediately after the explosions.

Pitt’s worst fears were realized after he watched the rescue vehicle return to the surface, and Giordino passed on the bad news over the phone. Hours later, he sat in the bridge control room at the chart table and studied the plans of the ship again and again, searching for some tiny clue to survival. Baldwin came over and sat on a stool opposite the chart table. He had regained a measure of composure, but the grim prospects weighed heavily on his mind. His breathing became noticeably labored.

“You haven’t closed your eyes in three days,” he said to Pitt. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“If I go to sleep, if any of us goes to sleep, we won’t wake up.”

“I’ve carried on the lie that help is just around the corner,” Baldwin said in obvious anguish, “but the truth is coming home to them now. The only thing that keeps us from a nasty confrontation is they’re too weak to do much of anything.”

Pitt rubbed his reddened eyes, took a swallow of cold coffee and studied the builder’s plans for what seemed like the hundredth time. “There has to be a key,” he said in a low voice. “There must be a way to attach a hose and pump purified air into the boat.”

Baldwin took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “Not with the hatch and air connector destroyed. And any attempt to punch a hole in the hull would end up flooding the rest of the ship. We must face the sad but fundamental fact. By the time the Navy can repair the damage, make an airtight seal and penetrate the hull so we can all be evacuated, our air will be used up.”

“We can stop the generators. That would give us a few more hours.”

Baldwin wearily shook his head. “Better keep the power on and let these poor people live as normally as possible until the end. Besides, the pumps have to stay ahead of the overflow from the flooded compartments.”

Dr. John Ringer stepped into the control room. The ship’s doctor, Ringer was swamped by passengers coming to the hospital and complaining of headaches, light-headedness and nausea. He did his best to provide them with whatever care was at his command without elaborating on the ultimate state of their tribulation.

Pitt stared at the doctor, who was obviously exhausted and on the verge of collapse. “Do I look as bad as you, Doc?”

Ringer forced a smile. “Worse, if you can believe it.”

“I do.”

Ringer dropped into a chair heavily. “What we’re faced with is asphyxia. Insufficient breathing caused by an insufficient intake of oxygen and insufficient exhalation of carbon dioxide.”

“What are the acceptable levels?” asked Pitt.

“Oxygen, twenty percent. Carbon dioxide, three tenths of one percent.”

“How do we stand at the moment?”

“Eighteen percent oxygen,” Ringer answered. “Slightly over four percent of carbon dioxide.”

“And the danger limits?” Baldwin put to him stonily.

“Sixteen percent and five percent, respectively. After that the concentrations become extremely dangerous.”

“Dangerous, like in deadly,” said Pitt.

Baldwin asked Ringer the question none of them wanted to face. “How much longer do we have?”

“You can feel the lack of oxygen the same as I,” said Ringer quietly. “Two hours, maybe two hours and thirty minutes, certainly no more.”

“Thank you for your candid opinion, Doctor,” Baldwin said honestly. “Can you keep some of them alive a little longer with the fire crew’s respirators?”

“There are about ten young people under the age of twenty. I’ll provide them with oxygen until it runs out.” Ringer came to his feet. “I’d better get back to the hospital. I suspect I have a line down there.”

After the doctor had left, Pitt went back to scrutinizing the boat builder’s plans. “For every complex problem, there is a simple solution,” he said philosophically.

“When you find it,” said Baldwin, with a show of humor, “let me know.” He rose to his feet and started for the door. “Time for me to put in an appearance in the dining room. Good luck.”

Pitt merely gave a brief nod and said nothing.

Slowly, a numbing fear seeped into his mind, not a fear for his life, but a fear that he might fail with so many people’s lives hanging on his finding a solution. But for a few moments, it also sharpened his senses and flooded him with extraordinary clarity. This was followed by a revelation that struck with such force, it stunned him momentarily. The solution
was
simple. It came suddenly, with appalling ease. As with so many inspirations that struck men, he could only wonder why he hadn’t seen it much earlier.

He jumped up so quickly he knocked over the stool in his rush to get to the phone attached to the line running up to the buoy. He shouted into the receiver. “Al! Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Giordino’s voice replied gravely.

“I think I have the answer! No, I’m positive I have the answer.”

Giordino was stunned at Pitt’s eagerness. “One moment, I’ll put you on the bridge speaker so Captain Turner and the rest of his crew can listen.” A moment’s pause, and then, “Okay, go ahead.”

“How long will it take you to set up the air hose and get it down here?”

“You know, of course, Mr. Pitt, that we can’t make a connection,” said Turner, his face gray like a rain cloud.

“Yes, yes, I know all that,” Pitt said impatiently. “How soon before you can be pumping air?”

Turner looked across the bridge at McKirdy. The chief stared down at the deck as if he were contemplating what was beneath it. “We can have it ready to go in three hours.”

“Make it two or you can forget it.”

“What good will it do? We can’t make a connection.”

“Your pump, will it overcome the surrounding water pressure at this depth?”

“She puts out five hundred pounds per square inch,” answered McKirdy. “Twice the pressure of the water at your depth.”

“So far so good,” rasped Pitt. He was beginning to feel light-headed. “Get the air hose down here fast. People are beginning to drop. Be prepared to use the vehicle’s manipulators.”

“Do you mind telling us what you have in mind?” asked Turner.

“I’ll explain in detail when you’re on site. Call me when you arrive for further instructions.”

O’Malley had stumbled groggily into the control room in time to hear Pitt’s conversation with the
Alfred Aultman.
“What have you got up your sleeve?”

“A grand idea,” said Pitt, with growing optimism. “One of the best I ever had.”

“How do you intend to get air in here?”

“I don’t.”

O’Malley looked at Pitt as if he had already expired. “Then what’s so grand about your idea?”

“Simple,” Pitt explained casually. “If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain …”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Wait and see,” said Pitt mysteriously. “It’s the most elementary high school physics class experiment in the book.”

T
he
Golden Marlin
was on the verge of becoming an underwater crypt. The air had deteriorated to a frightening extent, and the atmosphere had become so foul that passengers and crew were only minutes away from becoming unconscious, the first step before coma and then death. The carbon dioxide level was rapidly reaching limits that could no longer support life. Pitt and O’Malley, the only ones left on the bridge, were hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

Because their minds were numbed by the lack of oxygen, the passengers were becoming zombies, no longer capable of rational thought. No one panicked in the final moments, because no one fully realized their end was near. Baldwin talked to those still sitting in the dining room, encouraging them with words that he knew were meaningless. He was on his way back to the bridge when he sagged to his knees in a corridor and crumpled to the carpet. An elderly couple walked past, looked at the fallen captain through vacant eyes and stumbled on toward their stateroom.

In the control room, O’Malley was still murmuring coherently but not far from the edge of unconsciousness. Pitt was sucking deep breaths to take in what little oxygen was left in the room. “Where are you?” he gasped over the phone. “We’re about done in.”

“Coming.” Giordino’s voice sounded desperate. “Look through the port. We’re approaching the control room dome.”

Pitt staggered to the main port in front of the control console and saw the
Mercury
descending from above. “Do you have the hose?”

“Ready to pump when and wherever you say,” answered Chief Warrant Officer McKirdy. Captain Turner had remained on board the
Aultman
to command the operation from the surface.

“Drop down until you’re scraping the bottom and move toward the break in the hull opposite the engine room.”

“On our way,” Giordino acknowledged without questioning Pitt’s intent.

Five minutes later, Turner reported, “We are level with the gash caused by the explosion.”

Pitt found that fighting to breathe was ironic, considering that all the air he’d need in a lifetime was only a few feet away. He gasped out the words. “Use your manipulators and insert the end of the air hose as far back into the engine room as possible.”

Inside the submersible, McKirdy exchanged glances and shrugged. Then Giordino went to work moving the hose inside the gash with the manipulators, careful not to slice it open on the jagged and torn hull. Working as fast as possible, it took him nearly ten minutes before he felt the hose reach the far bulkhead and jam itself between the engine mountings.

“She’s in,” announced Giordino.

Pitt spoke, inhaling one word, exhaling the next. “Okay … start pumping.”

Again, the two men inside the rescue vehicle complied without challenging the request. McKirdy gave the order to Turner on the surface, and within two minutes a surge of air began bursting out of the hose into the engine room.

“What are we doing?” asked Giordino, mystified and grief stricken as he listened to what he thought were his friend’s final words.

Pitt rasped out the answer in a voice barely above a whisper. “A ship sinks when water under pressure floods inside the hull’s airspace. But at this depth, the air from your hose is blasting out at twice the pressure of the water, forcing it back out into the sea.”

The explanation drained what little fortitude he had left and he slumped to the deck beside the body of O’Malley, who had already slipped into unconsciousness.

Giordino’s hopes were suddenly renewed as he saw the water gush out of the engine room, driven back into the sea by the overwhelming pressure from the air pump 550 feet away on the surface. “It’s working!” he shouted. “The air is forming a bubble inside.”

“Yes, but none of the air is escaping inside the other parts of the boat,” said McKirdy.

But Giordino saw the method to Pitt’s madness. “He’s not trying to purify the air inside. He’s trying to raise the boat to the surface.”

McKirdy looked down and saw the hull of the boat embedded in the silt, and had grave doubts that it could break the suction and rise. After a pause, McKirdy said quietly, “Your friend isn’t answering.”